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From the archives

Claim Game

The high stakes of fraudulent identity

But Blind They Were

The fallacy of an empty continent

The Canadian Conversation

A Polish journalist’s perspective on residential schools

Barry Dempster

Barry Dempster has published more than sixteen collections of poetry, among other books, and has twice been nominated for a Governor General’s Literary Award.

Articles by
Barry Dempster

Death Notices

July–August 2015
  3/ Sweet Transformation – after Whitman The feeble/glorious arms of men, handing burdens over, passing on, away. Muscle is the soul sprung to life, the secret vice, the hard seed in the crux of the sunflower. I rest my cheek on a bicep: Jacob and his stone pillow. The cool crook of an elbow cradles me like a…

Milton's Grave

June 2015
  Milton lay in his Cripplegate grave repeating to himself that one blindness was similar to another. He felt the weight of time-to-come the way he’d once borne sky. This was no more alone than his wives’ deaths had made him feel. As he’d feared, paradise had nothing to do with him. Still, there was comfort: no more ink-starved…

Blue Rose

November 2007
I buy a blue rose to describe and think of Yeats dipping his quill in an ah of ink, hoping that love on the page would be less painful, or at least more rakish, something to shove in a buttonhole and watch wilt, beauty slowly disintegrating to a bruise. Next morning, saturated with longing, I stumble to the kitchen for a…